I laughed. “It’s a good many years now since we were together,” replied I. “We might as well be divorced as living the way we do.” “It’s because I’ve been feeling those very things, that I’ve come back,” said she. “It seemed to me that, now I’ve fulfilled my duty to Margot, I ought to do my duty to you.” “That’s like you,” said I. “For you life is one long sacrifice.” If she scented irony she dissembled well. “Sacrifice is the woman’s part,” replied she sweetly. “No doubt,” I went on, “you’re willing to stay here where you’re unhappy, and for my sake to jam the house night after night with people you care nothing about, and disport yourself in splendor to make the world envy me. I appreciate your nobility of character, but I positively can’t allow it.” “We must do our duty,” said she. “Society expects certain things of us, and we must do them.” “Not I, my dear. Open the house if you like. But I stick to my bachelor apartment.” “Do you want me to go back to Europe?” said she with a fine show of quiet melancholy. “I want you to do as you please,” was my answer. “But unless I stay here, and you and I take our place in society together, I--” She hesitated. “Now that Margot is settled,” she went on desperately, “I am adrift. And--Godfrey, we _can’t_ go on as we are.” “I see that,” said I. “What do you propose?” “To stay in New York,” replied she, with the promptness of the skilled fencer. “To stay here and be the mistress of your establishment.” “My establishment is an apartment at Sherry’s.” “But that’s impossible!” remonstrated she. “Be calm, my dear. I don’t ask you to lead my kind of life.” “Then--what do you propose?” ventured she. I shrugged my shoulders and settled myself more comfortably in her luxurious motor. I gazed with absorbed interest at the bunch of orchids in the flower-holder. “I don’t see how we can continue neither free nor bound,” pursued she. “Whatever you like,” said I. “Only--no fashionable capering for me.” “Do you want me to get a divorce, Godfrey?” said she. “I want you to be happy,” said I. “Divorce has no terrors for me. Aren’t we practically divorced already?” “That’s true,” said she. “We never did have much in common.” Then she reddened--for, she could not quite forget those first days of our married life, before I got the money to feed her ambition. “You make me feel as if you were a--no, not a stranger, but only a friend.” “And we _are_ friends,” said I heartily. “And always shall be.” For I was beginning to like her, to take the amiably indifferent outsider’s view of her, now that she was freeing me. “Godfrey, do you want to marry again?” she asked with a sudden shrewd look straight into my eyes. I laughed easily. “That question might better come from me,” said I. “You will never be happy, I suppose, until you are the Duchess or Princess Something-or-other.”